LIVING CONDITIONS IN THE WORLD'S LARGEST CITY
Five more tenants occupy the house where Elizabeth lives, each living in a single room with their families. The six-room house with unpainted dilapidate bricks has neither ceiling board nor electricity.
The single mother lives in two rooms with her three daughters and four grandchildren. One room serves as the sitting room, which is where her daughters sleep and the other is the bedroom which Elizabeth shares with her grandchildren.
Her sitting room contains a single 3 seater sofa with old uncovered cushions. There was a mat on top of the sofa, which serves as a bed at night. There was a charcoal stove near her bedroom, eight plastic buckets and three oil lamps on the floor and an unfinished mat that Eliza is currently weaving.
The other tenants occupy one room each. One family consists of a couple and their 15-year-old daughter who is in Form Two, the second family is a couple with teenagers, a boy and a girl, all living in a single room and the third is a family of four, a mother, father and their two small boys.
In the sixth room live a couple with two young daughters, one in Standard Two and another who is not in school yet. This makes a total of 23 people living in Elizabeth's house.
All these people share a single pit latrine and a small door-less bathroom. Although the conditions seem normal to the tenants in this house, the stench emanating from the dirty stagnant water outside and from the pit latrine not far from the house and the three bags of rotten garbage outside made me struggle as I pretended everything was alright.
People in this neighbourhood share more or less misery with the dwellers in slums and other unplanned settlements in other parts of Dar es Salaam. It is common in such areas to find one house's pit latrine built almost at the entrance of the other house. Lack of drainage systems makes the environment worse, with wastewater flowing down narrow paths between houses.
The filthy environment coupled with poor ventilation inside the houses makes the area indecent for human beings. In these areas, the environment is conducive for diseases like diarrhea, cholera, malaria, TB and the likes. Elizabeth feels that their lives are so threatened by their living environment.
Five more tenants occupy the house where Elizabeth lives, each living in a single room with their families. The six-room house with unpainted dilapidate bricks has neither ceiling board nor electricity.
The single mother lives in two rooms with her three daughters and four grandchildren. One room serves as the sitting room, which is where her daughters sleep and the other is the bedroom which Elizabeth shares with her grandchildren.
Her sitting room contains a single 3 seater sofa with old uncovered cushions. There was a mat on top of the sofa, which serves as a bed at night. There was a charcoal stove near her bedroom, eight plastic buckets and three oil lamps on the floor and an unfinished mat that Eliza is currently weaving.
The other tenants occupy one room each. One family consists of a couple and their 15-year-old daughter who is in Form Two, the second family is a couple with teenagers, a boy and a girl, all living in a single room and the third is a family of four, a mother, father and their two small boys.
In the sixth room live a couple with two young daughters, one in Standard Two and another who is not in school yet. This makes a total of 23 people living in Elizabeth's house.
All these people share a single pit latrine and a small door-less bathroom. Although the conditions seem normal to the tenants in this house, the stench emanating from the dirty stagnant water outside and from the pit latrine not far from the house and the three bags of rotten garbage outside made me struggle as I pretended everything was alright.
People in this neighbourhood share more or less misery with the dwellers in slums and other unplanned settlements in other parts of Dar es Salaam. It is common in such areas to find one house's pit latrine built almost at the entrance of the other house. Lack of drainage systems makes the environment worse, with wastewater flowing down narrow paths between houses.
The filthy environment coupled with poor ventilation inside the houses makes the area indecent for human beings. In these areas, the environment is conducive for diseases like diarrhea, cholera, malaria, TB and the likes. Elizabeth feels that their lives are so threatened by their living environment.